The Surprising Reason Strong Women Struggle With Relationships

It seems that successful women struggle with finding love. The reason why is steeped in history.

There's no denying that today, in this modern and somewhat feminist era, there is an abundance of smart, successful and independent women. These women have taken control over their lives and have the power to do whatever they want in our society — something that wasn't possible a few years ago. But although they are successful and independent, many of these women have a very hard time succeeding in their relationships. This article will try to explain why this happens, and offer possible solutions to these problems.

In one of her articles, Amber Hensley describes the 10 big differences between the male and female brain. The article does a very good job of showing the biological differences between men and women and for this particular piece, I would like to focus on a specific point: the left brain vs. both hemispheres.

Says Hensley: "Men tend to process better in the left hemisphere of the brain while women tend to process equally well between the two hemispheres. This difference explains why men are generally stronger with left-brain activities and approach problems-solving from a task-oriented perspective while women typically solve problems more creatively and are more aware of feelings while communicating."

Let's look at what this means in terms of day-to-day activities. Having a task-oriented approach means that men think in the following manner when trying to solve a problem: "I need to get this done first, then I can focus on this, then this other thing, then this and then they all fit into place and help me get this very last thing done."

This process is similar to math, and is essentially teaches men to break down a problem into smaller pieces, then take it one by one. This proves why men are stereotypically better in some jobs (business, programming) and women in others (teaching, caretaking). Of course, there are exceptions.

It's A Man's WorldThe term "independent woman" is fairly recent, and I think it became more popular with TV shows such as Sex and the City and women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan. The whole idea behind the successful, independent woman is that she can do anything she wants, have any high-powered job, and have no need for a man to take care of her.

This is a fascinating subject because we live in a society created by men. We still live in a so-called "man's world," which creates fantastic difficulties for the "aspiring to be successful and independent" woman. Let's take a closer look.

Thousands of years ago, when man was killing animals with his bare hands, a difference started to occur between the sexes. Men were able to do more physically intensive jobs simply because they had bigger and stronger muscles. This meant that men were able to hunt for animals while women had a hard time doing it. Because of this, men became the providers (hunters) and the women were left behind to take care of the children.

In time, purely based on human biology, women were excluded from most, if not all major decisions. Men felt that because women weren't able to prove themselves or pull their weight (by killing large animals) they didn't deserve to partake in major tribe decisions. As a result, men were the ones setting meetings, discussing the next hunt, the next move, the next village to build, the next town, the next war, how to run the tribe, how to run the empire, how to run the country, how to run trading routes... you get the picture.

Because women were, most of the time, left out on all these major decisions, the actual mechanics and inner workings of today's modern society and many of its parts (business/politics) have been built on the male mind (that task oriented approach). This makes our current society very much a man's world. Sure, it can be argued that women always had a major influence amongst powerful men, but that only argues decisions and not the actual undertaking of these decisions, which again, have most often been orchestrated by men.

How Does This Affect The Independent Woman?Today, everyone is equal. Women have the same rights as men and are able to do what they please. It's understandable if a woman has a hard time working on a construction site due to the intense physical labor, but why is it so hard for them to succeed in fields like business/politics? This happens because these systems have been built out of the male mind.

In order for women to become successful and independent, or to have high power jobs in business and politics they need to become, at least in the way they think, men. As hard as this may seem, many women manage to achieve this goal.

The DownsideBecause these women have tried so hard to fit into these male-dominated fields, they have essentially lost their feminine side. This is fantastic for their careers but devastating for their love lives. No man will ever want to marry another man; he wants to marry a woman that has the qualities of a woman. Even if these qualities didn’t mean much to the average guy, he could still not handle the fact that his girlfriend/wife is more successful than him or makes more money. Unfortunately, this is the major love-life struggle that smart, successful and independent women face today.

Possible SolutionsAs we speak, the feminist culture is having a profound impact on the male mind. We are starting to see men desire a strong, successful independent woman as their partner. However, these men are far from many and it's going to take a few decades (if ever) until these qualities become the norm for selecting a female partner. What can these women do in the meantime? I currently see 3 possible solutions which I'm going to illustrate below. Keep reading...